Saturday, January 6, 2018

South Coast Rail #1

Hi and welcome to 2018. SCR has had minimal work done on it over the last few weeks, it seems to be that quite period when Christmas, New Year and all things family come at once.The previous HO layout had many photos taken of it over its lifetime, hundreds as a matter of fact. These form part of its history and are readily accessible if I ever want to get nostalgic and take a trip down memory lane. So I took hundreds of photos but very few videos of the layout. One in particular shows a 44 class taking a coal train up to the mine, running around, loading and returning back down to Candelo. Another video was taken when I first received my 60 class garratt. Although only on DC I was able to enjoy the wonders of sound, as a matter of fact it was the only sound loco I owned. Thankfully manufacturers are now offering the choice of sound equipped locos which to my mind should be a given.I think one of the reasons I didn't take much video was because I didn't see the sense of having video of bare baseboards, this can be captured quite readily with a photo.Now that I have moved over to the On30 layout I find that the same situation applies. I haven't taken any video of the layout under construction. I suppose one day if I decided to make a video of the whole layout I can use photos added to show the various stages of construction.Today I felt that I had made sufficient progress to actually make a small video of the layout. There are sufficient areas that have allowed me to make "South Coast Rail #1". Future videos will follow, number 2 will be next!.Todays video making was also a chance to re-acquaint myself with the video editing programme. I am using Vegas Studio 14 which is probably just a complicated as any other programme. Although the programme has many options for doing fancy things a straight out video is all I want.So I went down the shed ready to have a go at the video. First job was to find the tripod which wasn't hidden to much. Video No 1 was to be just a 'hope it will all work' episode. I wasn't fussed too much with the number 1 train and found an NA coupled up to the six coal hoppers plus an NC bringing up the rear. Two of the coal hoppers have been repainted red from the black and there are four more to do at this stage. I will have to work out a code for these hoppers as well. The coal traffic on the narrow gauge was purely restricted to South Coast Rail. The coal comes from up in the hills at Candelo and works its way down to Eden where it will unloaded and reloaded into trucks for transport to the local power station. This was well and truly before those big propellers on the hills were ever invented.

Charlie is ready with his shovel to assist in coal unloading. Sick of washing his white overalls, his mum made him repaint the overalls a darker shade of gray.

The video starts off in Eden yard, the coal train departing the goods yard to then hang a left hand turn. It crosses over the road that leads into the goods yard and then heads towards Snug Cove (which at the moment is still bare baseboard) The train then skirts around the back of the coal unloading plant. Another level crossing is traversed. This is the exit for the coal trucks. The track starts to climb up from Snug Cove towards Broadwater only leveling off over the trestle a then coming into Broadwater. The trestle module is nearly complete, just some more scenery work to be done and as always more trees. Another level crossing is crossed just prior to entering the station. The train come to a stand on the main line and a climax on a log train is also seen in the video.This is the first video of SCR and was certainly a learning curve. After spending around two hours rendering the video and then another hour or so uploading to Youtube after finally loading I realised I has stuffed up by leaving some cutting room floor video on the timeline. So because I couldn't see it originally it processed about three minutes of black video then the surplus clip. So I had to delete and start all over again. Ah a learning curve. I just wish this uploading to Youtube was a lot quicker.So I hope you enjoy the first video of South Coast Rail, more to come in the future.